How much you understand and how much you don't...

With my current chance to live among many Japanese people in a hostel I'm daily confronted with Japanese - in terms of listening to conversations and speaking a bit myself.

On the one side I notice already how much I understand, even if it's just a bit or sometimes even whole sentences. However the lack of knowing the context or certain vocabulary or grammar rules makes it difficult on the other side.

First you have the relief seeing your progress getting more and more understanding and being able to have easy conversations yourself or even shocking some Japanese people by being able to talk to them in their native language.

The latter is certainly funny and I tell things like: '自分で勉強します。(I'm studying myself). It's definitely nice to be praised for your effort learning Japanese - personally I'm satisfied on the one hand - just comparing myself to last year - but I want more.

I noticed my ability to read manga or even some Facebook comments, news articles with furigana and similar stuff got faster. 

The biggest issue stopping me from reading faster is the lack of Kanji and certain vocabulary. But luckily I could see some improvement in that regard.

Through these daily conversations - also on FB messenger - I can increase my Japanese skills gradually which is really motivating.

But still, it's a long way ahead which I'm willing to follow.

New Japanese vocabulary - Mid-February 2018

As I'm currently continuing to improve towards my goal learning more and more Japanese I'm currently surrounded by many Japanese people which helps me getting more and more vocabulary - these ones I found quite important this week:

休憩きゅうけい
Meaning: break, recess
Comment: It's an important word for being at work. I memorized this word by using the following sentences to my Japanese working colleague: 休憩までは１０分。=> 'It's 10 minutes until the break.'

個室こしつ

Meaning: private room
Comment: As I switched to a private room that week I was taught this important word. I especially to a closer look at the second kanji: 室. It means 'room' and is one of the level N4 ones which I can remember now.

連絡れんらく
Meaning: to contact, to get in touch

Comment: Actually an easy and common one, but as I had it in several conversations (LINE and 'real') this week plus I still struggle to memorize the Kanji it made sense to put it into this list. Despite it's seems quite often used, the Kanji characters are for JLPT N2 and N3.

渡るわたるMeaning: to cross over, to go across
Comment: After work, a street needed to be crossed and like 'koeru' 'wataru' can be used. How I memorize it? Wataru is also a Japanese name and the first thing which comes to mind is Takagi Wataru (police guy from Detective Conan, 名探偵コナン). So I thing like 'Takagi is crossing the street' and here we go^^

Application out for JLPT N4!

This year it's time to go for the JLPT again. But unlike two years ago I will go one step further and will try the JLPT N4.

It's time to raise my game and give my ambitions improving my Japanese a new challenge. Two years ago I failed passing the N5 test, but back then I wasn't really used to read Japanese and my Kanji and vocabulary knowledge was quite low.

Especially the ability to read is important which I noticed during the test in 2016. I wasn't used to it and way too slow. I couldn't really read the longer text at the end and ended up guessing the answers without having gone through the text through the lack of time I had.

Additionally I wasn't that confident with the N5 Kanji and I guess I even made silly mistakes in that regard.

But the situation now is different: Just a few months after failing that test a acquired some manga in Japanese on my travels and kept me more into reading the language plus it also plays a huge role in learning new words. My Anki deck is getting filled with lots of vocabulary and especially words directly written in Kanji (but with furigana).

I found with Obenkyo an interesting recommendation for learning Kanji and the necessary vocabulary.

But surely it's not just that: Many grammar rules are important and are needed to be understood and learned. It's something where I definitely need to catch up.

Recently I was indecisive about taking N5 or N4, but I felt like that I could already easily pass N5 by now, but as it's still a few months to go until July I figured that it would be best to aim one step higher and go for N4.

So with currently being in New Zealand I had to sent my application via post delivery to Düsseldorf in Germany as they don't have the option yet to apply online. I found out that other places have that possibility already and that it's really easy in Japan as well of course.

But anyway, the application is out and now I can fully focus on passing N4 in July.